News and Notes

News and Commentary from the Who2 Staff

Saturday, September 17, 2005

Hamilton's Birth Date

Our friendly partners at Answers.com asked us for a clarification on the birthdate of Alexander Hamilton. We say 1757, some sources say 1755.

There's a controversy over Hamilton's age that goes back at least five decades. We found it discussed at length in volume one of Broadus Mitchell's biography Alexander Hamilton, which was published in 1957; other biographies since then also devote some brainpower to the issue.

Hamilton himself named his year of birth as 1757 consistently throughout his life, and it's the date on his grave in New York City. However, he was an illegitimate child, born in the West Indies, and no birth certificate or christening records exist.

The modern controversy comes from probate court records from 1768, the year that Hamilton's mother died on St. Croix. As part of the probate proceedings, her relative Peter Lytton (Broadus calls him "one of the most responsible men on the island") stated that Alexander and his brother James were 13 and 15, respectively. Thus, counting backwards, one can conclude that the boys were born in 1753 and 1755.

Broadus finds this convincing, but not all scholars do. Presumably Lytton had no reason to lie about it, and presumably he was in a position to know the boys' ages... but on the other hand, maybe he had and wasn't. The circumstances of the boys' birth were pretty convoluted: their mother had walked out on her neer-do-well husband in 1750 but he didn't file for divorce until the end of the decade, by which time she'd had two boys by another neer-do-well, Hamilton's father (who later walked out on *them*). Between the complications, the confusion, and the taint of illegitimacy, it's possible that Lytton didn't have (or didn't give) the right figures. (As a sidelight, Lytton committed suicide the next year -- it was a complicated childhood for poor Hamilton in any case.)

Everyone seems to agree that Alexander Hamilton got a charge out of presenting himself as a prodigy, and those who lean toward 1755 count that as one more reason to doubt him on 1757.

Our view is that long-established dates shouldn't be altered without rock-solid proof to the contrary. Though we find the probate records and the statement of Peter Lytton to be intriguing, we're sticking with 1757 as his year of birth.

Besides the Broadus biography, you can get more information on the topic from Odd Destiny: The Life of Alexander Hamilton (1982, Macmillan, by Marie Hecht) and Alexander Hamilton: A Life (2003, HarperCollins, by Willard Sterne Randall). Hecht leans toward 1757 and Sterne comes out flatly for 1755. Sterne has great detail on the death of Hamilton's mother and the arrival of the probate officers. Curiously, he also apes Broadus's description of Peter Lytton word for word: "One of the most responsible men on the island."

Labels: Alexander Hamilton, Disputed Birth Dates

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